from the are-10%-now-bricked? dept

Analysts from investment bank Piper Jaffray are making some news today after releasing a report claiming that 10% of iPhones are actually being sold to groups that are unlocking them and reselling them. They seem to be basing this on the fact that there are a bunch of folks going in and buying the maximum single allotment of 5 iPhones at a time. If this is true, the actual number of unlocked iPhones could actually be significantly higher, as many unlockers are buying the phone and unlocking it themselves. On the flip side, there could be other explanations for people buying 5 iPhones rather than to resell them unlocked. Either way, it should be clear that there's a fair amount of demand for unlocked iPhones, which again raises the question of why Steve Jobs ever agreed to an exclusive with AT&T.

from the and-so-it-goes dept

As Apple warned earlier this week, the latest firmware update did, in fact, "break" unlocked iPhones and kill unofficial 3rd party iPhone apps. It's still not clear how intentional this was, but it still seems like something that Apple should have made at least a little more of an effort to avoid. The folks who unlocked their iPhones and who were installing 3rd party apps were the early adopters who were most likely to go out and evangelize the device -- especially if it was more useful thanks to alternative networks and better applications. Over at Gizmodo, they have a good post discussing what's actually happening, with two important points: the update is not doing any permanent damage to the phone (meaning that it'll probably be a short while until software hacks are developed to bring bricked iPhones back to life) and that Apple could have pretty easily avoided messing up the phones (suggesting that perhaps it was at least somewhat intentional).